1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet recording method of recording images by applying ink to a recording medium by an inkjet method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various methods have been proposed for image recording methods for recording color images in recent years. However, in all of these methods, there are still demands on the quality levels of recorded objects, for example, in relation to quality of image, texture, and curling properties after recording.
The inkjet technique has been applied for office printers and household printers, and is recently increasingly being applied in the field of commercial printing. In the commercial printing field, printed sheets are required to have an appearance similar to that of general printing paper, rather than a surface that completely blocks penetration of ink solvent into the base paper such as that of a photograph. However, when a solvent absorption layer of a recording medium has a thickness from 20 μm to 30 μm, the properties such as surface gloss, texture and stiffness are limited. Therefore, the application of inkjet techniques in commercial printing has been limited to, for example, posters and forms, for which the qualities on surface gloss, texture, stiffness and the like of a printing medium are tolerable.
Furthermore, a recording medium for exclusive use in inkjet recording is expensive since it is provided with a solvent absorbing layer and a water resistant layer, and this is also a factor that limits the application of inkjet technology in the field of commercial printing.
As an inkjet recording method for forming high quality images, an image recording method in which a liquid composition for improving images is prepared in addition to an usual inkjet ink, and the liquid composition is deposited on a recording medium prior to the ejection of the inkjet ink, has been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2004-59933). In this method, the components of the inkjet ink are aggregated on the surface of paper by a component in the liquid component, and thus the ink is fixed before dullness or bleeding on the image occurs.
From the viewpoint of accelerating the penetration of ink solvent into a recording medium, there is known a technique of using a penetration liquid for accelerating the penetration of the ink solvent into the recording medium wherein the penetration liquid contains a surfactant, or a technique of fixing image areas in order to enhance performance such as the gloss of the image areas (see, for example, JP-A No. 2008-200855).